News

Negima, Duel Masters, Penguin no Mondai, Mai Mai Promos

The official website for Ken Akamatsu's Negima! Magister Negi Magi manga has begun streaming an updated three-minute promotional video for the first episode in the Mahō Sensei Negima! ~Mō Hitotsu no Sekai~ original anime DVD series on Wednesday. The Japanese publisher Kodansha had announced in February that this would be the second DVD series to be bundled with volumes of the manga. Akamatsu personally created the story, supervised the script, and produced the anime. The first of four volumes in the new anime series will ship with the 27th manga volume on September 17. Del Rey will publish the 24th volume of the manga in North America next month.

The Toho Movie News website has posted the full 98-second trailer for this month's double-billing of the Duel Masters and A Penguin's Troubles (Penguin no Mondai) anime films. (In the linked page, select the first movie link under the Coming Soon section's righthand column, and then select the third button in the next window's righthand side.) Duel Masters: Lunatic God Saga and Penguin no Mondai: Shiawase no Aoi Tori de Go-Pen-nasai will open in Japan on September 19. The same website also has the previous two teaser trailers and several television commercials.

The ongoing Duel Masters Cross anime is the sixth television series based on Shigenobu Matsumoto's Duel Masters manga, which in turn is based on the collectible card game from Wizards of the Coast and Takara Tomy. There was already a Duel Masters movie released in 2005. Cartoon Network ran the television anime version in the United States. Yūji Nagai's original A Penguin's Troubles children's gag comedy manga deals with the everyday life of a penguin named Beckham Kinoshita. Beckham happens to go to Kirikabu Elementary School with humans and crave "Mac" hamburgers and fries. The manga already inspired a television anime series that has been airing in Japan since April of last year.

The Japanese film distributor Shochiku has posted a 31-second trailer for director Sunao Katabuchi (Black Lagoon) and MADHOUSE's anime film adaptation of Nobuko Takagi's Mai Mai Miracle (Mai Mai Shinko to Sennen no Mahō) novel. The story is set in 1955 in a town in southwestern Japan, where a nine-year-old girl named Shinko has an ancient family connection to a thousand-year-old province known as Suō. Shinko joins Kiiko, a new transfer student from her school, on a magical adventure. Before directing Black Lagoon, Katabuchi was an assistant director on Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli's Kiki's Delivery Service, and he also directed Meiken Lassie and Princess Arete. Mai Mai Miracle will open on November 21.

Thunderbolt Fantasy races to the top spot as we catch up on our weekly user rankings! Find out how your favorite shows performed according to our readers' votes.― Our team of reviewers are following 27 anime series of the Fall 2018 season and readers are rating each episode as the reviews go up. So let's have a look at what ANN readers consider the best (and worst) of the season. Keep in mind that ...

Paul checks out the crude but effective sequel to a troubled anime series about fighting giant bugs on Mars, plus a breakdown of all this week's new anime releases!― Something about living in the Northeastern US has a tendency to warp one's mind in very particular ways. As I was digging my car out of half a foot of snow last week, I caught myself thinking, "The weather's not too bad today." You kno...

Crunchyroll and Funimation's short-lived romance is over - but why? Justin has a few angles on what happened, and what might happen next.― Jonathon asked: Funimation ended the partnership with Crunchyroll recently, and a bunch of their shows are getting pulled off of VRV, which sucks. Why did this happen? What will happen to the two companies? Should I be concerned that one of them is going to go a...

This supernatural romance's longest arc yet arrives at its climax in a volume that demonstrates all of this manga’s strengths and weaknesses. Nick Creamer has the details.― The Ancient Magus' Bride's eighth volume ended with Elias betraying Chise's trust so completely that he drove her into the arms of their mutual foe, the mysterious Cartaphilus. Across this ninth volume, both Cartaphilus' and Chis...

Miss any of the big headlines from this weekend's Anime NYC? We've got them all in one place, plus a boatload of cosplay photos!― November 16-18, 2018 New York City Cosplay Galleries Cosplay Gallery I Cosplay Gallery II Day One Headlines Aniplex USA to Release Black Butler Season 1 on Blu-ray in January Aniplex USA Announces Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online English Dub Cast (Update) I ...

DanMachi returns to telling smaller self-contained stories as Bell reaches Level 4 in his training. Theron Martin has the details.― With the three-volume arc involving the Xenos now complete, writer Fujino Omori returns both to carrying out a pure dungeon crawl and to telling an entirely self-contained story. That's not to say at all that this is an isolated story; some elements and consequences of ...

While voice actors and anime production staff are common guests for overseas conventions, why is it so much less common for manga artists to make the journey? Deb Aoki has the answers.― Why don't more Japanese manga artists come to N. American comic / anime conventions? It's largely a matter of time, availability and money. Most manga artists, especially those who have series that are published on ...

Ryo Mizuno, creator of wars both Lodoss and Grancrest, talks up his long and storied career in novels and RPGs alongside the producer of the new Grancrest War mobile game from Bandai Namco.― Ryo Mizuno's career has been pretty spectacular – both a novelist and a game designer, Mizuno made his mark after creating a legend with the blockbuster fantasy novel series Record of Lodoss War back in 1988 (wh...

This slice-of-life drama where rich kids must grapple with a meritocratic system has some fascinating ideas, but ultimately can’t come together into a greater whole. Nick Creamer has the details.― There's a certain subgroup of anime high school dramas that I've come to essentially see as “Catcher in the Rye shows.” Echoing the defiantly cynical yet extremely naive perspective of Catcher's Holden Cau...

To celebrate the upcoming special theatrical event of MIRAI on November 29, December 5 & 8, GKIDS is giving away awesome stuff to ONE lucky winner!― From acclaimed director Mamoru Hosoda (Summer Wars, Wolf Children) and Japan's Studio Chizu comes MIRAI, a daringly original story of love passed down through generations. To celebrate its upcoming special theatrical event on November 29, December 5 & ...